12.2 A 4-Channel 200Gb/s PAM-4 BiCMOS Transceiver with Silicon Photonics Front-Ends for Gigabit Ethernet Applications

The ever-increasing demand for high network capacities and escalating data centers have pushed the boundary from discrete transceivers toward the integration of monolithic electro-optical ICs [1]. Furthermore, complex modulation schemes such as PAM-4 have been introduced to improve the trade-off between circuit bandwidth, power consumption, data-rate and optical-link range compared to NRZ signaling. Therefore, the cost advantage of a fully integrated silicon solution will eventually push classical discrete implementations toward obsolescence.